


Little Tremors

by kissingandcrying



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Touch-Starved, newt has a few emotional hold-ups to fix, one singular kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-14 10:12:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16911027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kissingandcrying/pseuds/kissingandcrying
Summary: Dumbledore hadn’t seen Newt in years. Though he’d imagined a few times what their reunion might entail, he’d never expected it to take place at the ministry, two steps from a jail cell.





	Little Tremors

**Author's Note:**

> This is a prompt fill that took me way too long. It's Dumbledore/Newt to an extent. Leading up to, it's fairly general and there's a lot of Theseus involved.

As a professor, Dumbledore felt it was his duty to say that each student he’d ever taught had left an impact on him. In a way, it was true. He remembered almost every student that walked through his doors for one reason or another. Good, bad, or in-between, if they ever needed his help then he would gladly do whatever was in his power to take care of them.

But there was only one student who, above all others, had caused Dumbledore so much grief, and so much happiness, so much excitement, so much _questioning._ Though he hadn’t seen the boy in years, occasionally he would sit at his desk and think about him, wonder where he was or what he was doing, how he was living. Where he was at. The boy wasn’t particularly hard to find; with a brother who worked for the Ministry and a notorious habit for getting in trouble, Dumbledore had passively heard of the boys (mis)adventures in Magizoology, but it had been years yet since he’d sat at his desk and had the joyous company of one curious Newt Scamander, pawing at the items on his desk and asking them why he had them.

He’d expected that eventually, Newt would turn up. He’d never imagined that it would take place at the ministry with the boy two steps from a jail cell.

“Dumbledore!”

Dumbledore turned sharply and watched as Theseus walked briskly towards him. The halls of the ministry were wide and cavernous; his name was still echoing by the time the man reached him. Theseus seemed as nervous as anything and his brows were furrowed in a harassed manner. It was quite obvious that he was upset.

“Your message was delayed by the weather. I apologize for the delay,” Dumbledore started. He removed his hat and pushed it under his arm so that he could undo his coat. “What’s happened?”

“I’m not… He’s just… I’m sorry. I don’t know.”

“Theseus, your brother is currently being held by the ministry for endangerment to a human being. What has he done?” Dumbledore asked. He tried to keep his voice neutral, but he was so seldom lost about things that he couldn’t help the hint of confusion that worked its way into his question. The largest part of the puzzle he couldn’t solve was this: Why was Newt currently in custody, and if not for a punishable offense, how could Theseus have allowed it? “There is something more to this story than you’ve written me. If you wouldn’t mind telling me quite plainly - what has he done? _Who_ is in danger?”

“Himself,” Theseus breathed. His shoulders sagged as he rubbed his forehead. There was a breif pause before he continued, “I thought to send him to St. Mungo’s. I hadn’t heard from him in weeks and so I went to check on him. He was… oh, _god_ , I’m afraid he’s losing it. But when he is fit to leave from here, I can let him go. When he is fit to leave from St. Mungo’s… I have no say over his stay there.”

“I’m not a psychiatrist,” Dumbledore reminded him gently. “I must speak with you plainly, Theseus, I’m not sure I can help you.”

“It’s not for me. You _can’t_ help me,” Theseus said loudly. “But you can help him. You’re the only person who's never him feel bad for who he is. You’re here because you understand what’s happening. He just needs to be realigned. He’s not crazy, he’s… he’s down on his luck. I want for him to be okay.”

“Show me,” Dumbledore said quietly.

Theseus put up no restraint. He nodded almost boldly and then closed his eyes and imagined what he’d seen in the days before. Dumbledore focused his attention and reached out to cup Theseus’ cheek, slowly crawling his way into the man’s mind to look for the memory. It wasn’t hard to locate, just a bit turbulent to navigate. It wasn’t long before Dumbledore felt himself falling, falling, falling into…

_The interior of the suitcase; darkened and faded by the film of memory._

_It was hard for Dumbledore to place himself, but almost immediately he noticed the large willow sitting in the middle of a grassy habitat. Sitting beneath it with his arms wrapped around a baby mooncalf was none other than Newt, though it could be argued that this Newt was considerably more neglected than the one Dumbledore had taught at his school all of those years ago. He seemed almost unrecognizable._

_The man’s hair was sticking up at odd angles. His strawberry blonde curls had always misbehaved, but this seemed more a case of carelessness; the once lively and defined locks of hair had become tangles that were matted together in some places. The man’s undershirt had been rolled up on his forearms, displaying a series of bruises and scratches that were openly bleeding. His vest had been undone and the closer Theseus got to him the easier it was to see the level of grime that had clung to them._

_The mooncalf was cooing in Newt’s presence, but Newt seemed dissociated, staring down at it in an almost ill manner._

_“Newton,” Theseus called. His thoughts were rolling. His panic was palpable. Dumbledore felt the weight of it all as clearly as if he’d been injected with it. Theseus approached Newt cautiously, with his stomach in knots and his heart thumping wildly in his chest._

_Newt startled and looked up._

_“Theseus,” He breathed. He paused for a long moment and then said, “Please leave.”_

_The memory went fuzzy, Newt was suddenly in front of him and looking up at him from his position on the ground. He looked worse like this. His eyes were bloodshot, his nose was red, and it was clear that it had been a long time since he’d eaten. He looked weak and unhealthy. The mooncalf scampered out of Newt’s grip and trotted to another part of the field, and Theseus kneeled down, reaching out to rub one of Newt’s curls from his forehead. Speaking more to himself than anyone, he whispered, “How could I have let this happen?”_

_Newt reached up and gently moved the man’s hand away. “Don’t.”_

_“Don’t_ what _,” Theseus asked shortly. It was as if the dripping blood in his peripheral had set his temper off. He reached out and grabbed Newt’s arm, yanking it forward so that the extent of the man’s injuries was clear and on display for the both of them. When Newt looked away, embarrassed, Theseus grabbed his chin with his free hand and forced it back. “Look at yourself, Newt. For fuck’s sake!”_

_“I’m not a child,” Newt argued, though his voice quivered and he didn’t have the strength to pull away. Instead, he squeezed his eyes closed and hiccoughed, clearly staving off the frustration of weakness and replacing it with an uncensored train of thought, “I’ve never once felt so poorly in my life, Theseus, and I wanted to come here. Why can’t I just come here?”_

_“You can, Newt, but you must be well. Do you understand that? You can’t do this to yourself, lock yourself up in here with things that are hurt and dying when you’re in the same position,” and as if in apology for his earlier outburst, he released Newt completely and just laid a shaking hand on the man’s jaw instead. “You’re all I have left and I’m - you’re - please, Newt. Please.”_

_Dumbledore could feel the fringes of the memory closing in on him, Newt’s mouth still forming around the end of a sentence when there was a steady pressure, a large white wall and then Dumbledore was in_

The hallway, standing in front of a Theseus who was biting his bottom lip and looking off to the side.

“You’ve modified it,” Dumbledore said.

“I’m not proud of everything I said,” Theseus admitted.

“I won’t ask you what you changed, or what you’ve removed. Only if he went willingly.”

“To a degree,” Theseus said.

Dumbledore had already started to remove his coat. He shrugged it off of his shoulders and hung it over his arm. “Your brother is hurting at the moment. I’ll do what I can, but I make no promises. I’m requesting one thing of you, Theseus,” and with a stiff look at the man, Dumbledore said quite sharply, “Should I fail to engage him, he should go to St. Mungo’s.”

Theseus hesitated. It was obvious in how he looked away, furrowed his brows, shook his head slowly. He didn’t want to. His fear of losing his brother to anyone was a rabbit hole he was all too willing to climb into, and so here he was on the precipice of anxiety, holding his brother in a cell in the hopes that he could straighten him out enough to send him home. He couldn’t recognize that he was losing the man anyway.

“I can’t, Dumbledore,”

“No, you _must_ ,” Dumbledore said firmly, using his own words against him. He moved in a bit more closely and laid his hand on Theseus’ shoulder. “Even his creatures don’t sit in cages. He doesn’t deserve to be in one. He won’t get better in here.”

“And St. Mungo’s is the answer?” Theseus asked petulantly. “I’ll never see him again.”

“If you leave him here,” Dumbledore started, turning and heading towards the room for less serious offenders. “You will never see him again, either.”

As Dumbledore’s Oxfords clicked their way down the hall, he thought about Newt; the curious young man who had bought a baby Diricrawl to him in his second year and convinced him to keep it in the classroom while it healed from a broken foot. The young man who had written him one summer and said that he hadn’t been accepted in the magizoology field because he’d been expelled, but that he didn’t need a school’s support to follow his curiosity. The very same man who had made more strides in the field _despite_ the lack of degree, and single-handedly reignited interest in magical creatures throughout the world. That very same man was being held at the ministry for reckless endangerment to none other than himself and was in a manic state of mind, restless, underfed and likely very, very exhausted. It all seemed unfair and the facts stuck uncomfortably to Dumbledore’s skin.

When Dumbledore arrived at the door for the holding room, he went in with only a brief knock on the door for warning. It was a sterile office with a welcome desk and only one woman was sitting behind it. Her desk plate read “Eloise Martin”.

“Are you Albus Dumbledore?” She asked. She hadn’t even raised her head.

“I am.”

“Theseus sent us a pin.”

“I’m here to speak with Newton Scamander,” Dumbledore said. His coat was creating a warm patch of sweat on his forearm. He wasn’t too fond of the ministry, himself. He could only imagine the stress that Newt was going through. “I’d like to request a private room.”

“We don’t do that here,” Eloise told him. “It’s a jail darling, not a hotel.”

“I’m aware,” Dumbledore said shortly. He had neither the time nor the patience for entry-level ministry employees. “However, Newt is not under arrest. He’s being held unlawfully by a brother with anxiety. I suggest you allow me to talk to him in private or otherwise explain to your superiors why you bypassed the logging codes for him.”

Eloise looked up but didn’t raise her head. She thought for a moment and then licked her lips. Eventually, she must have decided that dealing with the peeved wizard standing at her desk was going to be more effort than it was worth, because she said, “Right. I’ll… collect him.” With a heavy sigh, she stood up out of her chair and tugged the wrinkles out of her skirt. “Go and wait in room 42. We’ll be in momentarily.”

“Thank you.”

Dumbledore wasn’t easily upset. He had his short-temper moments like any middle-aged wizard, but on the whole, actively avoided them like the plague. The last time that he’d truly lost his temper had been when a student almost killed themselves playing with magic that had been strictly forbidden and even then, he hadn’t done more than folded his arms over his chest and said (quite firmly, mind you), “You’ll be lucky to not be expelled for this. Now if you wouldn’t mind removing yourself from my class. Immediately.” It wasn’t much of a telling off. His more tempestuous moments were often done quietly, seething in the back of his mind while his mouth rattled off calmly.

When Eloise pushed open the door to waiting room number 42 with Newt in arm, Dumbledore could feel his body run cold. He never panicked anymore, hadn’t done that since his mother had died and he’d returned to his house to care for his sister. But he could feel his control slipping as Newt scuffled into the room and he wondered if this might be the day that those heavy emotions began to present themselves once more.

“Oh, Newt,” Dumbledore whispered.

Newt looked up when he heard his name and immediately paused. He looked mortified. Theseus had cleaned him up and so his hair was a fresh set of curls that framed his face. He was drowning in the man’s clothes, his cotton pullover and his high-waisted trousers were just too big. He wasn’t wearing shoes, just a large pair of cotton socks that had ducks sewn into them. But his arms were still scratched and bruised, the undersides of his eyes were so dark that they were almost black. His usually more colored appearance was flushed and pale, and he was thin, so, so thin. Dumbledore breathed for a moment, watching him, taking it all in. He looked terrible.

“Theseus called me.”

“Right,” Newt croaked. He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry you had to come all of this way. It would’ve been better had he not called you.”

Eloise nudged Newt into the room a bit further and then stepped back out, closing the door behind herself. Dumbledore and Newt stood feet away from each other but Newt stared at the floor.

“He didn’t tell you I’d be here?” Dumbledore asked.

“I didn’t know.”

“Come and sit down,” Dumbledore invited. He moved around the only table in the room and pulled out both chairs behind it, tossing his coat over the back of the one he sat down in. When Newt didn’t move, Dumbledore patted the empty seat beside him and repeated, “Newt, please. Come and sit with me.”

It took a minute of tense silence for Newt to make the decision, but he moved after a moment. With his feet dragging along the floor and his hands latched nervously in front of him, he went to take the empty seat beside Dumbledore.

* * *

 

On the topic of unquestionable truths, Dumbledore knew many. If food were provided, people would come. Teenagers weren’t _intentionally_ self-destructive, it was a part of the growing process. There was nothing like a warm cup of tea on a frosty, December evening. And above all others, Newt Scamander was a good man.

In the slow hours that passed with the two of them sitting side by side in some semblance of a conversation, Dumbledore was reminded of this. Newt wasn’t well. He was exhausted and he was sick to death of _thinking_ and yet here he was, asking Dumbledore after a few hours “how are my creatures doing?”

By the end of the visit, Dumbledore didn’t have much of a choice. Sending Newt to St. Mungo’s seemed premature and yet leaving him here seemed cruel. There were few alternatives to the one that Dumbledore eventually proposed when Theseus barged into the visiting room, sweat dripping down his forehead and a large collection of multi-color folders in his arms.

“You could compress those, Theseus,” Dumbledore suggested with a soft smile. “It would certainly make them easier to carry.”

“Oh,” Theseus said as if he hadn’t thought about it. He laid the folders on the table and then pulled out his wand, flicking it in their direction and effectively squashing them into something ¼ their original size. As he put his wand away, he looked nervously over at his younger brother and said, “How are you Newt?”

“I’d like to go home.”

“I know,” Theseus said. “I’m not sure it’s wise to allow that at the moment.”

“You can’t hold me here,” Newt argued, eyebrows already furrowing in that aggravated fashion. He wasn’t looking at Theseus. He was still upset and doing his best to keep it together. When he shook his head and stood up from his seat, he said clearly, “I want to go home.”

“Go home for what?” Theseus asked. “So that you can lock yourself up in your case _again_ , and I can find you in a week, half infected, half mad, and wholly unconcerned about it?”

“You are so selfish, Theseus,” Newt yelled. “You can’t keep me here!”

“Please! I’m not keeping you here, I’m let-”

“This is imprisonment! It’s unfair.”

“ _Did you see yourself, Newton Scamander,”_ Theseus hissed, composure slowly unraveling. Now that he had nothing in his arms, he yanked the folders off of the table and held them against his chest, lip quivering as he said, “you’re _dying_ and you can’t even tell! You’re making yourself _sick_ with those animals! How can you care for them if you’re _DEAD.”_

The last word was punctuated and Theseus looked heartbroken even saying it.

After a second, Dumbledore cleared his throat and stood up. He reached behind himself to grab his coat and then slipped back into it, adjusting the collar. Then he picked up the hat that he'd laid down earlier on the table and propped it back on his head. “There is a compromise here for both of you. Newt, you’ll stay with me for the evening. Theseus, I know you’re often overnight and so you can come and collect him in the morning. Between now and then, we’ll talk,” He looked over at Newt. He tried to keep his face even, unaffected, but a soft crinkle of his eyes was almost natural given the way that Newt considered him from his chair. “Is that alright with you?”

“Yes,” Newt said slowly.

“And you?” Dumbledore asked, turning back to Theseus.

“O-Of course.”

“Then Newt, please go and grab your things. I’ll wait for you at the network and we can go home together. Theseus, let’s you and I take a walk. And Newt…” Dumbledore trailed off as he headed towards the door. “The shoes are optional - I quite like the ducks.”

Newt peered down at his feet as Dumbledore and Theseus left the room.

The walk back to the entrance was tense. Theseus’ grip on his folders didn’t loosen despite Dumbledore reaching out and touching the back of his hand gently. The green walls of the ministry didn’t help relax or calm the man down, and by the time the two of them reached the Fountain of Magical Brethren, his hands had begun to shake.

“You will take care of him, won’t you Dumbledore?” Theseus asked. “I don’t mean to lose my temper, but he can never seem to see it.”

“An outward thinking man like that, when forced to look inward, can sometimes struggle with the disconnect. He is kinder than most, to everything but himself.”

“He’s like our mother in that regard. If he suspects something is wrong or if he feels that he’s hurt someone, his instinct is to overexert himself in taking care of _things_. It drives me mad. He’s so good at it and yet somehow...”

As they passed the fountain, Dumbledore looked up at it. The construction was new. It was what amounted to a large pool with golden statues of various magic-folk centralized around a wizard, pointing high into the sky with his wand. Albus wasn’t overly fond of the concept, but would admit that it was a step up from what had been a large empty space before. He reached into his pocket for a sickle and tossed it into the water.

“He is a mother, through and through,” Dumbledore noted as they headed towards the series of fireplaces that the ministry used for their Floo Network. “Theseus, I know that this is frustrating. I’ve no right to even suggest how you should approach this situation. But I can see the toll that this is taking on you.” As if to make a point, Dumbledore paused and when Theseus did the same, reached out to still the man’s shaking hands for a second time. “Take care of yourself.”

“I want to take care of him, too,” Theseus said. “He’s all I have left.”

“You’ll not always be there. It’s more important, I think, to teach him how to take care of himself and to accept the risk of him making mistakes with it a few times along the way.”

It was a short and hesitant goodbye. Newt came down shortly afterward, nodding his head in Theseus’ direction but otherwise saying nothing in terms of goodbye.

“Newt,” Theseus called. “Please, be alright until tomorrow.”

Dumbledore smiled and said, “We’ll make it a group activity.”

When he reached out to lay a hand gently on Newt’s shoulder, the man flinched away from him, but smiled over in apology afterward. Dumbledore considered him for only a second before turning back to Theseus and saying, “Call as you need. I’ll be with him.”

The good thing about the Floo Network was that it was fairly unimposing. Newt crawled into the green flames first and then Dumbledore followed him in, shooting Theseus a sharp nod before finding himself seconds later on the soft, colored rug of his own living room. Newt had shifted off to the side so that Dumbledore could come out of the fireplace, but he hadn’t moved to take a seat and was, instead, looking around the room almost feverishly. He still looked pallid and unkempt, but his eyes were much more alert.

Dumbledore removed his coat and hat and sent them to hang on the coat rack. Newt copied almost blindly.

“Would you like some tea, Newt?”

“Not really,” Newt told him.

“What would you like to drink?”

“Noth-” Newt started, but paused when he saw the slow raise of Dumbledore’s eyebrows. He smiled and corrected, “Apple Juice.”

Dumbledore hadn’t stocked Apple Juice in years. He _did_ have apples, though, and thought up a quick and (perhaps) inane plan to keep Newt busy.

“Would you like to make some with me?”

“You don’t have any?”

“I drunk the last cup _just_ this morning,” Dumbledore fibbed. “Come on.”

It turned out that making apple juice, even with magic, was difficult. Newt hadn’t remembered to pick up his wand from Theseus when he left the ministry, and so while the man was doing the therapeutic rinsing of the apples, Dumbledore was stuck trying to configure his magic in a way that split the apple from it’s core. They only had twenty or so apples to work with, and so after the third fruit spliced it’s way, midair, and then landed in a heap on the floor, Dumbledore resigned himself to doing the work by hand.

“It seems that my magic is not up to par,” Dumbledore joked. “I’ll have to practice pitting.”

“Is there a spell for that?” Newt asked.

Dumbledore reached around behind him to grab a knife from the counter, forearm snaking across the middle of Newt’s back in the process. Newt curved inwards, bending almost unnaturally to avoid the pressure.

“Are you alright?”

Dumbledore had noticed the man’s affinity for avoidance as far as touching went, but hadn’t thought that even the unintentional ones were so effective. Newt looked a bit shocked himself, hands pausing in the sink with the water running over them.

“Y-yes. Sorry.”

“No need to apologize,” Dumbledore said honestly. “Are you sure that you’re alright?”

“I’m fine,” Newt assured him, but one look into the water and Dumbledore could see Newt’s fingers shaking around the apple.

“Newt,” Dumbledore said. He reached out to touch Newt’s hands beneath the water and the man yanked them back as if physically repulsed. He stumbled away from the sink, hands still clenching the apple, and tripped into one of the cabinets behind him. If he’d wanted to make _any_ argument for his being alright, he’d certainly have to work harder at it now. The man looked positively appalled, his cheeks a bright red and eyes even redder and his hands shaking so badly that it seemed he was trying to remove the pit from the apple by sheer force.

Dumbledore couldn’t allow Newt to deal with this on his own. If he couldn’t touch him, then so be it, but they needed to talk about this. He turned around and shut the sink off, and then asked, “How long has it been like this?”

Newt wouldn’t look at him. The man was still pressed up against the cupboards.

“Maybe we should just sleep until tomorrow,” Newt suggested.

“Please talk to me,” Dumbledore said, instead. “Are you alright being like this?”

“Of _course_ not,” Newt said frantically. “I don’t know what’s happening. My… I…”

“Newt,”

“I thought I was alright but it seems this last year, one thing after another, always, always something and it was too much. I left! I hid! I know this, and I couldn’t change it! I could feel it,” Newt cried, showing his forearms where the scratches and bruises were still visible. A visit to St. Mungo’s would have patched him up immediately. Instead, he used his scars as leverage. He began to ramble again, “I don’t want to die but sometimes they… sometimes I’m just overwhelmed! I love them, god, I love all of them. I love Theseus, I loved Leta, I… and I’ve gone and… what does it all _matter?_ ”

Newt’s arms stayed out in front of them as a buffer. An easy way to keep them away from one another and to provide the distance that Newt was used to in these situations.

Dumbledore stepped closer to him anyway and said, “May I?”

“No,” Newt said immediately, sharply, drawing his arms back in. “Yes. No. _Oh_ , I don’t _know.”_

Instead of reaching for Newt again, Dumbledore held his own hands out steadily. It was a pity that in the years that they’d missed each other, or hesitated to keep in touch, that Newt had grown without him and in the process, fallen down into a set of emotions he couldn’t crawl out of. “It’s not easy, Newt, to come back from those dark places we find ourselves sometimes. You have to try. If the way you are isn’t the way you’d like to be, then you have to try. Not on my timeline. Not because I’m here. If you’d like me to walk away now then I will.”

Newt seemed to be at war with himself. He looked from Dumbledore’s hands to his face, from his hands to the floor, at his hands… and then he dropped his apple and timidly reached out, fingertips lingering just above Dumbledore’s open palms.

“You can touch me,” Dumbledore assured him.

“I want to,” Newt admitted. He rested the warmth of his hands over Dumbledore’s and shivered. His eyes were glossy and his cheeks were so red, and it was clear that he was struggling to keep himself still, but Dumbledore just closed his hands and locked the man into his grip, taking another step closer. Newt stepped back on impulse, bumping right back into the cupboard. Dumbledore followed him.

“What are you thinking?” Dumbledore asked so quietly that it almost wasn’t a question at all. Newt’s hands twitched in his palm and he bit his lip, looking away. “Is this alright?”

The two were standing closer than they ever had before. In class Newt had bent over his desk to show Dumbledore something, called him over to look at a paper, asked him questions after running into him in the hallway, but they had never been so close with the intention to just _touch_. That had never been the relationship that Dumbledore was trying to foster. In the years that they’d been apart, almost a completely altered Newt had emerged, and this one needed Dumbledore’s fingers, and his attention, and his pretentious words.

The depression, the neurotic mothering behavior, the inability to handle those soft brushes of skin without it being aggressive or otherwise impossible to avoid, it was all because Newt had cut himself off from the world for long enough to forget how good it felt to be close to people.

Dumbledore chanced another step in and Newt took a deep breath.

“No,” He said softly, but he didn’t move. He didn’t try to remove his hands.

“Should I leave?” Dumbledore asked him.

“No,” He repeated, even more softly. When he looked up, Dumbledore’s face was right there, so close, and their hands were still joined together between them. Newt had nowhere else to go, but Dumbledore could see the emotions cycling on his face. He could see the water gathering in the corners of Newt’s eyes. He could hear the way the man’s voice quivered when he said, “You don’t have to touch me.”

“I want to do this,” Dumbledore told him, leaning down a bit more closely, so that the next time he spoke, his breath was a warm presence against Newt’s forehead. “It's more important that we  _try_ , together or separate. I want you to get better."

“I can’t get better! I’ve messed it all up,” He was still looking up at Dumbledore, tilting his head back more and more until their lips were far too close. Newt had lost a bit of the jittering in his fingers, and his breath seemed to be getting more labored as he spoke, Dumbledore thought that it had little to do with his anxiety at having the two of them standing so close and more to do with a decision he was making. “I - I…”

“Do you think that people won’t love you because you’ve made mistakes?”

“Yes,” Newt said. It was inaudible. Dumbledore could feel the man’s lips move against his own, and it was so brief and so unexpected for both of them that Newt made a strange and strangled noise in the back of his throat and just pressed up into it. A kiss, or maybe a curiosity gone too far. A joke, a truth, something between the two, and a former student and his professor, standing in the kitchen together after years, trying to pick up the little pieces of Newt that had dropped off along the way.

It wasn’t but two seconds. Newt pulled back and he was crying, tears dripping from the corners of his eyes as he then laid his head on Dumbledore’s shoulder and rearranged their hands so that he could squeeze as tightly as he wanted. He was shaking, his entire body was vibrating against Dumbledore’s, and he sobbed against Dumbledore’s vest, wetting the cloth all the way through to the skin.

“It’s not true, Newt. Never listen to that voice which tries to convince you that it is.”

Newt didn’t respond. He only cried until he was coughing, and then he wrapped his arms around Dumbledore’s shoulders and hugged him for a long while.

Theseus was going to be pleased with some developments. He was going to be less pleased with others. Though as Dumbledore stood in his dim kitchen and rocked with Newt in his arms, rubbing his back and stroking his hair and warming him up to human affection once more, he also wasn’t sure what to make of the turn of events. He wrote it off easily, when Newt had quieted and his body had gone still, and he was just sniffing mildly from his position against Dumbledore’s body. He never pulled away, he didn't do anything strange. He just... relaxed into it all. Resigned himself to the very thing that many other humans took advantage of.

No doubt he looked as exhausted as Dumbledore had seen him in Theseus’ memory, and no doubt he needed some time and space to think, but for now just little touches to drive off the little tremors that wracked the man’s body from time to time was enough.


End file.
